In the event that you need to get either the last or first post based on published date within your WordPress plugin or theme, you can use the get_boundary_post() function. In this article, we will show you how to use the get_boundary_post() function.
If you would like more information on creating WordPress plugins, see our tutorial series on creating your first WordPress plugin.
Basic usage
<?php get_boundary_post( $in_same_cat, $excluded_categories, $start ); ?>
The post information is placed within a WP_Post object in which you can then extract any post information you want from it.
Optional parameters
$in_same_cat: This optional parameter accepts a boolean (true or false) value in which it will determine if the post should be in the same category.
$excluded_categories: This optional parameter allows you to exclude category IDs that you do not want to be included within the posts that are returned.
$start: This optional boolean (true or false) value will allow you to define where it starts. For example, if you are getting the first post, this would be set to true. If getting the last post, you would set it to false.
Example
Displaying the title of the most recent post
In the following example, we use the get_boundary_post() function to get a WP_Post object and assign it to a variable. Then, we simply output the post title from the WP_Post object using the PHP echo command.
<?php
$boundary = get_boundary_post( false, ”, false );
echo $boundary->post_title;
?>
References
For more information on the get_boundary_post() function, take a look at the get_boundary_post() WordPress Codex page.
